Miller Lake

This weeks fishing adventure saw me taking a trip to a little lake that I had only just heard about this year. I have been hearing tales of some of the best eating fish in our area coming from this lake and after being there, I can certainly see why that would be true. The water is beautifully clear for a small lake up in the mountains. With polarized glasses on I could easily see the bottom in over 20' of water. The shoals are covered in a thick mat of weeds that hold an abundance of aquatic insects for the fish to feed on. I have fished the Falkland area all of my life and had never been to Miller, yesterday I found out what I had been missing. I also got to spend some time with a good friend of mine that I hadn't spoken to in a couple of years. I used to work away on the road before I bought the store and when you are away for weeks on end in small towns with a group of co-workers, you can become pretty good friends. I spent a lot of time in the mills with my friend Murray who is one of the smartest technology guys I have ever met. We ran into each other the other night over in Vernon while we were playing ball and made plans to get out fishing.

Pulling into the so-called parking lot, we found it to be totally submerged under about 16" of water, just enough to float my 14' boat and get us out into the main body of water. The shore line at the launch is teeming with small black Tadpoles right now, all swimming in unison and seemingly with no real objective. We pushed the boat out and entered the main lake to find a very large shoal that was about 10' deep and seemed to go on forever. As this was my first time on the lake, I decided to work my way across the shoal and try to sight fish, but there weren't any fish up feeding in the shallows where I could easily see them. I decided to move off the shoal into some deeper water and try our luck for a bit. After several casts and nothing on the fish finder, we pulled anchor and moved again along the shoals looking for those active fish. This wasn't my first rodeo and I knew there would be fish feeding along the shoals on certain parts of the lake and we just needed to find them. Finally I spotted 2 fish moving together in search of breakfast and just as I shut the motor down, I got a hit! We swung the boat around and parked it perpendicular to the shore line and anchored in about 18' of water. I had set Murray up with my Reddington RS4 rod and a dry line combination with a size 16 cranberry chironomid 12' under an indicator. I was running my Aqualux line and fishing that same little damsel that gave me so much success in Gardom.

The damsel started off strong and got me into fish right away. I had landed 5 fish before Murray got his game face on and made a charge for my fish count. We went on a role all day and landed close to 20 fish with around the same number out fighting us and spitting the hooks before we got them landed. The damsel was the bug of choice to start the day but it seamed to cool off in the afternoon and the chironomid that Murray was fishing started to be more consistent. We pumped a few of the fish and found a variety of insects inside of them from chrome/red, lime green and brown chironomids to red water Daphne, shrimp about 3/16" long and May fly nymphs. We had great weather with the sun shining all day to get the insects hatching and a slight breeze picking up once in a while to give that chironomid line the extra action that it needed to entice the fish to take it. We did not move all day once we found the fish. We were able to sit there, enjoy the day, share some laughs and catch a lot of great quality fish. All of the fish that we took were in the 1.5lb range with Murray getting the best fish of the day to our boat at around 2.5lbs. This fish had already been hooked before and the evidence was still stuck in his upper lip. The hook was a very large size 8 complete with a barb that made it very difficult to remove before we released it. I have added some pictures of the fish but please keep in mind that Murray is 6'4" and those big hands really make that nice fish look small.

If you are looking for a little lake with good access and even better fish quality, give Miller some consideration. I have heard that it isn't an easy lake to fish but we sure seemed to figure it out. If you come on in to the store, I will gladly show you the right flies to give you a chance at having one of those amazing days.

Enjoy Your Outdoors!